Field
Aspects of the present invention generally relate to a medical image processing apparatus, a medical image processing method, and a program installable in a medical image processing apparatus.
Description of the Related Art
In recent years, treatments within the blood vessel using a stent graft have been popularly performed, and a stent graft has been applied widely to treat a narrowing or an aneurysm of the coronary artery and the carotid artery, such as an abdominal aortic aneurysm. Thus, minimally invasive treatments with a catheter resulting in a minimal skin incision have become possible. Treatments using a stent graft may be greatly advantageous to patients from aspects of preservation of brain and renal functions and low cost of the treatments.
Such endovascular aneurysm repair may require pre-defining the length of the stent graft. Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2014-100297 discloses using an X-ray image data captured by using an X-ray diagnosis apparatus to calculate the length of a blood vessel from a starting point to an end point of a region where a stent graft is to be indwelled in consideration of a curvature thereof and present the result to a user.
Endovascular aneurysm repair which recently has started to be performed on a thoracic aortic aneurysm may require a stent graft having a length corresponding to the length of a greater curvature (outer circle) of the thoracic aorta so as to address a bending and a tortuosity of the thoracic aorta. In this case, because the thoracic aorta runs three dimensionally, the length of a greater curvature of the blood vessel may be required to be calculated three dimensionally. Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2014-100297 discloses calculating the length of a blood vessel in consideration of a curvature but does not specifically disclose how the length of a blood vessel in consideration of a curvature can be obtained, and it may not be said that the calculated length is highly reliable.